WILLIAM SAFIRE IS ALL OVER DAN RATHER:
Alert bloggers who knew the difference between the product of old typewriters and new word processors immediately suspected a hoax: the “documents” presented by CBS News suggesting preferential treatment in Lt. George W. Bush’s National Guard service have all the earmarks of forgeries. . . .
It may be that CBS is the victim of a whopping journalistic hoax, besmearing a president to bring him down. What should a responsible news organization do?
To shut up sources and impugn the motives of serious critics – from opinionated bloggers to straight journalists – demeans the Murrow tradition. Nor is any angry demand that others prove them wrong acceptable, especially when no original documents are available to prove anything. . . .
Hey, Dan: On this, recognize the preponderance of doubt. Call for a panel of old CBS hands and independent editors to re-examine sources and papers. Courage.
“Preponderance of doubt.” I like that.
UPDATE: USA Today has had its own experts look at the documents, and it looks like a “preponderance of doubt” there, too.
I spoke to a big-paper reporter who interviewed me about this story over the weekend. He was amazed that CBS went with the story given the obvious flaws with the documents. And that’s right. I suppose it’s still barely possible that they might be genuine — but it was gravely and recklessly irresponsible for CBS to insist on the documents’ genuineness when there were so many reasons for doubt, and when CBS, by all appearances, had made no real effort to resolve those questions. I mean, why didn’t they get somebody like this to look at the documents?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Blair wonders why they didn’t get one of those “editor” people to look at Amanda Ripley’s piece in Time.
Sadly, they probably did. They should have asked Professor Bainbridge to provide some adult supervision. Send those guys some pajamas!
MORE: Here’s an observation from Terry Oglesby that only someone who has used a typewriter will appreciate: the documents are bogus because they show no strikeovers or corrections, even though they were memos to the file. Oglesby writes: “No corrections–erasures, overstrikes, fluid, tape–on that CYA memo. I’m not a document expert, but I have used a typewriter before. Sorry, Mr. Rather, but no matter what your host of ‘experts’ have told you, the memo you keep waving in the air was done on a computer.”
Though as far as we can tell, Rather’s “host” of experts consists of one handwriting analyst.